In Oakland, this is gentrification when it knocks on your door

Dante Zedd and his daughter Addie, 5, pose on the steps of Dante's mother's house in the Dogtown neighborhood of Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, April 15, 2018.

Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

Dante Zedd can barely recognize Clawson, the West Oakland neighborhood he’s lived in for more than three decades.

He calls Clawson Dogtown, a nickname he says was earned because of the stray dogs that once roamed the streets nuzzling for food.

The dogs barking in Dogtown these days are on leashes or in yards with sturdy fences.

“This ain’t the neighborhood that I grew up in,” Zedd told me one recent Saturday afternoon from the stoop where he watches Dogtown’s daily transformation. “This the neighborhood I wish I grew up in.”

Zedd, 41, is the single father of a 5-year-old daughter. He works as a nighttime janitor at Peralta Community College. I met him last year as he was emptying trash cans at the college, where I host a monthly music show for KGPC.

I’d been looking to tell a story about gentrification from the eyes of someone who’s watched their neighborhood change. Zedd invited me to hang out on the steps of the house his mother owns on 32nd Street. She also owns the house next door. He says his family is among the last black property owners in the neighborhood.

Houses and buildings in Dogtown are wrapped in scaffolding, and the whirring screech of power saws every morning can substitute for an alarm clock.

“It just seemed like you wake up — bam! It’s there,” Zedd said.

More developments — and more new neighbors — are coming.

Two blocks away on Hollis Street, 124 apartments are on the rise. On Hannah Street, next to West Oakland Farm Park, the foundation of a four-story, mixed-use complex is being excavated and graded. When I walked by the other day, I asked about the dog tied to the fence surrounding the lot. I was told it belonged to the backhoe operator.

Seven decades ago, Dogtown was settled by blacks who migrated from the South to work in Oakland’s shipyards during World War II. The industrial area was one of the handful of neighborhoods where blacks, who were subjected to public housing segregation and discriminatory lending policies endorsed by the federal government, could find adequate and affordable housing.

Once undesirable and bereft of outside investment, historically black and brown neighborhoods in San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond and other Bay Area cities are now inundated by housing and retail investors.

This, unfortunately, means people of color get displaced. But what about the black families like Zedd’s who remain anchored in their neighborhoods?

This is what gentrification looks like when it knocks on your door.

When he was growing up, Dogtown was a neighborhood that wasn’t safe for people to walk dogs. As Zedd told me this, a white couple passed walking a dog on their way to play fetch in the field near his house.

We laughed at the timing.

“It’s like everybody dead or in prison so now it’s OK for (white people) to move back in the ’hood,” he said. “That’s how it feel like.”

Zedd on the steps of his mother’s house. She also owns the house next door.

Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

He feels out of place at home, and he’s worried about whether it’s safe for a black man to walk the streets of the neighborhood he’s lived in for 36 years.

“I’m an outcast now in my own neighborhood,” he said. “I’ve been saying that for the past two or three years now. (New neighbors) drive by and look at me like, what am I doing here? How can I live here?

“I’ve been here.”

The thing is, Zedd really didn’t expect to be here — alive.

“I always had it in my head growing up that I wouldn’t live any longer than 25,” said Zedd, who recalled a white day care teacher telling him he wouldn’t amount to much. “And when you’re young, you think that’s an old age anyway.”

There weren’t many jobs in the area, so he started slinging drugs in high school to earn money.

“I seen kids my age having nice things,” he said.

Nice cars with flashy gold rims. Nice sneakers and nice clothes. And the attention from girls, of course, was especially nice.

“I didn’t see anybody successful unless they were drug dealers,” he said. “When I was growing up, they would give us money to go buy something from the store. They was the nice guys.

“I didn’t register the risk of it all. I just saw all the glamour and glitz. I wanted to be a part of that.”

Zedd’s been shot once, with four bullets piercing his body. Even after he’d left the street life and gotten a job, there were years when he didn’t leave the house without a gun because he feared retribution for the things his friends had done.

He told me only one childhood friend of his hasn’t gotten shot. It sounded like a positive piece of his life — until he added the friend is in federal prison without a real shot at life.

Zedd understands that some people — some of you reading this right now — will have a hard time identifying with his struggle to build his life without access to resources. But it’s a plight that many black and brown people in the Bay Area face.

“You have to live it to understand it,” he said.

Dogtown was once a neighborhood to survive, a place to escape. Now it’s an attractive neighborhood within biking or walking distance of Emeryville stores. Still, Dogtown’s future residents won’t be able to overlook the tent communities in the neighborhood, like the sprawling encampment on Peralta Street.

When Zedd drives past the camps, he recognizes people.

“I know they used to live in a home,” he said.

There are no more crack houses set up in abandoned homes in the neighborhood. Sure, that’s a good thing.

Dante Zedd’s 5-year-old daughter, Addie, stands in front of her home in Oakland’s Dogtown neighborhood that was settled by blacks and where Zedd has lived for 36 years. He has watched gentrification change it.

Photo: Photos by Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

“It’s good and bad everything that’s going on in the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s less crime. It’s a safer neighborhood. But it’s just no identity. Everyone who deserves to be here or want to be here can’t be here.”

But his daughter will grow up here.

“I’m hoping that she’ll grow up and run around happy,” he said. “I hope she grow up not seeing race or color or anything and she’ll be able to enjoy a new neighborhood.”

And maybe when she gets older she’ll get the pony she’s been asking for. They already have a dog.

Otis R. Taylor Jr. is the East Bay columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, focusing on the people who make the region a fascinating place to live and work. A South Carolina transplant, Otis spent more than a decade at The (Columbia, S.C.) State newspaper, writing about arts, culture and entertainment. Previously, Otis was the managing editor of a tech startup. Otis is interested in reporting on issues relating to diversity and equality in the East Bay, as well as the region’s history, culture and politics. He studied English at Clemson University.